Title says it all really - 3.6 was fine, I didn't try publishing between buying 4.0 and trying 4.1b, and now I can't update my photostream on Flickr. LR appears to hang for a minute, then tells me "can't update this collection. An internal error has occurred: Invalid at the top level of the document"

Seems to me some settings xml file is corrupt. If someone could at least point us to the right one, perhaps it could be manually fixed?

I was pretty eager to get some photos up on Flickr, so I downgraded back to 4.0. Now, I get a permissions error when I attempt to publish, and the plugin settings page doesn't give me an option to log out (even though I deauthorized Lightroom in Flickr, attempting to reset everything when I first got the permissions error).

All in all, everything's completely hosed for me now with Flickr publishing.

This is a known bug that we fixed internally. Some background: Flickr annouced that they will deprecate the old user authentication API in July. This particular LR 4.1RC has updated the Flickr plug-in to use their authentication API of the future. However, the old user authentication token (incompatible with the new one) is still cached on in the old Flickr publish service created in the earlier version of LR.

The current workaround is to create a new Flickr publish service in LR4.1RC and use that instead of the one created earlier.

And thanks for the workaround. However, I'd really rather not clutter up my library with another publishing service that I'll have to maintain indefinitely (if I want to maintain the two way linkage to Flickr). And moving all my already published photos to to a new service would mean breaking the linkage and republishing hundreds of photos.

Any tips on how I can restore the functionality in the non-RC 4.0? At appears the Flickr authentication was broken, and I can't seem to find any way to reauthenticate in 4.0. I'm afraid I made things even worse by deleting the Lightroom permissions in Flickr, in an attempt to reset everything and trigger the prompt to authenticate.

I agree, setting up another publish service is going to just mess things all up. I like Lightroom because I can keep things organized. That's not going to work if I have to create another one. How do I revert back to 4.0 and get things working the way they were previously?

This is crazy! I have a few photos I need to republish after making some tweeks. I can't republish shots using the original Flickr service from 4.0 or earlier because of this so-called "fix" in 4.1RC. If I create a new Flickr publishing service, it'll work fine for new photos going to Flickr, but doesn't help me republish my old photos. If I publish those old photos via the new service, I'll end up with 2 copies (albeit, slightly different) of the image on Flickr. This is madness!!!!!

If Adobe can't make their own software so that users have a seamless upgrade experience, and even negotiate with 3rd parties if necessary to ensure this (or run two versions of something behind the scenes concurrently/transparently), it's just broken.

It's not even like reverting to 4.0 is a real solution. Users have found their tone curve adjustments to be lost in 4.0, and they can't update flickr content from 4.1.

For someone who works with curves, has a reason to put images on flickr, and occasionally adds a tag or edits a picture title/caption, this essentially blocks them from doing their work/hobby.

And going back to 3.6 isn't a "fix" either, unless it is compensated in some other way. Adobe aren't likely to start issuing partial refunds on LR4 or non-trivial vouchers towards CS6 stuff to make up for the fact that they have just got $x in sales for a product that stops (some of) their users in their tracks.

Maybe if we ask nicely they can give all early adopters a free pass to LR5 when it lands

I enountered the problem of not being able to upload to Flickr after installing LR4.1RC and the message "can't update this collection. An internal error has occurred: Invalid at the top level of the document".

I found a workaround that solved my problem. (Your mileage may vary.)

I shutdown LR4.1RC and then replaced Flickr.lrplugin in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4\ with the Flickr.lrplugin from LR3.6.

When I restarted LR4.1RC and attempted to publish to Flickr, the plugin reported an authorization error. I right-clicked on the Flickr publish service and chose Edit Settings...

Under the Flickr account section, I saw that I needed to log-in again. I pushed the Log In button and reauthorized my Lightroom Publish Connection.

After that, I was able to publish without a problem to Flickr using the LR3.6 Flickr plugin.

Got as far as the authentication error, but it didn't offer me the chance to login again.

So I went to Flickr.com and revoked LR's access, restarted LR, but still no change.

Then I tried creating a new "dummy" Flickr service, went through the login process, but still nothing (I have not tried to upload anything from that service, at this stage I am only interested in getting my existing service to work)

So now I have LR4RC1 with the 3.6 flickr plugin, and I can't force LR to logout or switch user - annoyingly the dummy Flickr service has an option to switch user, but in the same place on the service I want to use there's no such option...

I've tried digging in Regedit and other user folders in C:, but I can't see anything that could be an authentication token.

Can anyone from Adobe step in and give us a fix, even if it means getting our hands dirty in so-called risky system areas?

Note, after installing the 3.6 Flickr plugin, I too got the authenication error when trying to publish and was not offered the chance to log in again.

At that point, I right-clicked on the Publish service for Flickr and selected Edit Settings... In that dialog, I had a Log In button that was enabled. Once I pressed that button, the plug-in went through the authenication process. After that, publish worked and has continued to work for me (your mileage may vary).

Earlier, I had expreimented with many other ideas for getting the 4.1RC Flickr plug-in to work before trying the 3.6 plug-in. In that process I verified that I could create the error message "invalid at the top level of the document" using the 4.1RC Flickr plug-in by (1) creating a new Flickr publish service, (2) testing that the new service worked by uploading from it, (3) deauthorizing Lightroom on the Flickr website, (4) attempting to publish again from the new Flickr publish service. At that point the publish failed with the message ""invalid at the top level of the document".

My guess is that this problem revolves around the handling of the authorization token. I note that the LR4.1RC Flickr plugin is about 5KB larger than the LR3.6 Flickr plugin on my system. This suggests that there are coding differences between the plugins.

I should point out that I was careful not to delete my original Flickr publish service. I noticed that creating a new service and publishing previously published images to Flickr allowed duplicate images to be loaded into my Flickr photostream. These duplicate images did not have comments and appeared as new additions to my stream. If you value your view counts, comments and favorites, be very careful and don't make changes you don't understand. Operations such as removing and republishing images to Flickr might lead to the loss of this information.

I also tried the 3.6 Flickr plugin, but getting an authentication error message. The "login" button on the publish settings is disabled. So I'm still stuck and have images that are waiting to be "republished", with no way of publishing them....

I have the same issue as DangermanUK... even if I downgrade, my login button on the publish settings page is disabled (so I don't have any way to reauthenticate), and I get a permissions error when I try to publish.

I caved and just created a new publish service, which works fine. Just a bummer I'll forever have to maintain a "4.1 RC" publish service, unless I want to delete and publish them all again. And still no way to republish old photos...

Thanks for the tip gpiii, but that was actually one of the first things I tried when I saw the login button was disabled. It didn't make a difference in my ability to login again, as I'd hoped it would. LR still thought it was logged in, no matter what I did. Thanks though.

Same here. I uninstalled 4.1RC and reinstalled 4. The Logon button on the Flickr publishing service is still disabled, so I'm totally fed-up now!! I can't update any of my photos which are already published on Flickr. I sincerely hope Adobe sort this mess out....and soon!

This is a known bug that we fixed internally. Some background: Flickr annouced that they will deprecate the old user authentication API in July. This particular LR 4.1RC has updated the Flickr plug-in to use their authentication API of the future. However, the old user authentication token (incompatible with the new one) is still cached on in the old Flickr publish service created in the earlier version of LR.

The current workaround is to create a new Flickr publish service in LR4.1RC and use that instead of the one created earlier.

The work-around is, as folk have said, a real kludge - messy and difficult to adminster. And, presumably, once done, you have to live with it forever, as re-integrating to a single Flickr collection without loosing comments will be impossible.

@Simon: Are you saying that the Final Release will correct this bug, by updating the old user authentication token suring the update process? (In which case, waiting for the Final is the sensible thing to do.)

So I created a new publish service for Flickr and it worked fine for a few days. It just stopped working when I updated some keywords on a photo I published earlier today. It gave me the error message that was stated in the original post. Looks like your workaround is also busted.

Can you elaborate? I did the same but it still fails. I copied the Flickr.lrplugin from a Lightroom 4.0 backup, overwrite the 4.1RC1 version, lightroom then asked me for a Flickr API key which I generated and configured, but I still cannot publish. Did restart Lightroom.

More accurately I made a new Flickr publish service, dragged everything across to it from the old one, deleted everything directly on Flickr, deleted the old service, then hit Publish.

I forgot to note down the names of my sets, and Flickr deletes them when they become empty, so I had to rebuild those.

However - I am a *very* light Flickr user, only putting a very limited number of shots on - I now have 38 pics online. It didn't take long to rebuild my sets, and it won't take long to resubmit them to groups that have daily/weekly limits.

Also I have only been flickr-ing for a few months, so I don't have a lifetime of comments/faves to feel attached to (but there were some, which I regret losing).

For users with more content online than me, or more community engagement on Flickr, I imagine it would be laborious, heartbreaking, or frankly impossible to make the choice I just made.

Thanks Adobe, Flickr user /cdeverett is back to square one thanks to LR4.

In summary, it appears that one of the RC's introduced a bug where if a CR / LF is present in the caption the LR reports it cannot connect and suggests you check your connection or it reports a problem with the "top level document". A problem report was raised on it during the RC trials and if relevant to you then you may wish to add your vote.

After reading this updateed thread, I D/l'd and installed LR4.1. I embedded a CR/LF in to a caption and republished, I did not have any problem. This was on a Mac, so maybe it inserts LineFeeds differently from Windows/DOS